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1 2.PORAT&POSNER.69.DOCX 10/11/2012 3:18:48 PM Ariel Porat & Eric A. Posner Aggregation and Law abstract. If a plaintiff brings two claims, each with a 0.4 probability of being valid, the plaintiff will usually lose, even if the claims are based on independent events, and thus the probability of at least one of the claims being valid is If a plaintiff brings two independent claims, and neither of them alleges misconduct sufficient to justify a remedy, the plaintiff will usually lose, even if the claims jointly allege sufficient wrongdoing to justify a remedy. Thus, as a general rule, courts refuse to engage in what we call factual aggregation (the first case) and normative aggregation (the second case), as well as other forms of aggregation that we identify. Yet we show numerous exceptions to this rule in private and public law. Notably, in public law, the hybrid rights doctrine permits courts to aggregate two weak constitutional claims as long as one involves free exercise of religion. In private law, certain tort and contract doctrines also permit aggregation. We criticize the courts inconsistent approaches to aggregation, and propose conditions under which courts should (and should not) aggregate. authors. Ariel Porat is Alain Poher Professor of Law at Tel Aviv University, and Fischel- Neil Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School; Eric A. Posner is Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. For very helpful comments we thank Bobby Ahdieh, Hanoch Dagan, Avihay Dorfman, Shai Dothan, Lee Fennell, Talia Fisher, Sharon Hannes, Daniel Hemel, Aziz Huq, Roy Kreitner, Shai Lavi, Daryl Levinson, Richard McAdams, Martha Nussbaum, Timna Porat, Adam Samaha, Avraham Tabbach, Adrian Vermeule, Laura Weinrib, Eyal Zamir, and participants in workshops at Emory Law School, University of Virginia School of Law, Tel Aviv University School of Economics, and Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law. Thanks to Lior Kotler, Ellie Norton, Omer Yehezkel, and Randall Zack for very able research assistance, and to the members of The Yale Law Journal Editorial Board, and in particular Ned Hirschfeld, for their excellent suggestions and editorial assistance. 2

3 the yale law journal 122: introduction Suppose you are invited to dinner by a friend. You are a bit tired, but not extremely tired, so that reason by itself would not make you decline the invitation. You also want to spend the evening with your family, but this reason standing alone would not convince you to stay at home. Finally, you are also a bit pressed for time because you need to prepare a lecture for tomorrow, but once again you would not miss the dinner for that reason only. It is quite plausible that even if none of these reasons, standing alone, is sufficient for you to decline the invitation, the aggregation of all three reasons would be sufficient. Nevertheless, we suspect that most people, while aggregating the three reasons for themselves and declining the invitation, would not say to their friend that they cannot come to dinner because: (1) they are tired; (2) they want to spend the evening with their family; and (3) they need to prepare a lecture for tomorrow and are therefore pressed for time. They would instead choose the strongest of the three reasons and provide it as the sole reason for declining the invitation. Consider another possibility. Your friend invites you to dinner a week in advance. Peering into the future, you predict that with some (low) probability you will be too tired, that with some (low) probability your children will need help with their homework, and that with some (low) probability you will need to prepare for work on the following day. You realize that while each event will individually come to pass with low probability, the probability that at least one of the events will come to pass is quite high. Even so, you would not say to your friend (if you want to keep your friendship) that while each reason you have for turning down the invitation is low probability, they are jointly high probability. Most likely, you would turn down the invitation on the basis of the most probable reason. These puzzles, which we call aggregation puzzles, have counterparts in the law. Consider a plaintiff who brings two separate claims against the defendant arising from the same event, a car accident. The plaintiff argues that the defendant committed a strict liability tort by driving an inherently dangerous vehicle and, in the alternative, that the defendant caused a tort through negligent driving. To win on the strict liability claim, the plaintiff must prove that the vehicle was inherently dangerous, but the plaintiff can provide evidence to show only a 40% probability of inherent dangerousness. In addition, the plaintiff can show only a 40% probability of negligence. A court would hold against the plaintiff on both claims because she cannot meet the 50% preponderance-of-the-evidence threshold for either claim. However, if the 4

4 aggregation and law two claims are independent, 1 the plaintiff can show a 64% probability that the defendant committed either one tort or the other. 2 Yet courts do not permit this type of cross-claim factual aggregation. For another example, this one involving claims arising from two distinct events, consider a plaintiff who can prove with 40% probability that the defendant engaged in a material breach of a contract, and also can prove with 40% probability that the defendant engaged in fraudulent misrepresentation to induce the creation of the contract. Under either theory, the plaintiff would be entitled to rescission of the contract. Yet again, although the probability that at least one claim is valid is 64% (assuming that the claims are independent), the plaintiff would lose, because courts do not permit cross-claim factual aggregation. A second type of factual aggregation, which we will call cross-element factual aggregation, occurs across the elements that make up a single claim. For example, a negligence claim has elements of fault and causation, each of which the plaintiff must prove to establish liability. Say the plaintiff can prove each with 60% probability. If the probabilities of the two elements are not aggregated, the plaintiff wins, because the probability of each element being valid is higher than 50%, and so the plaintiff has established all requisite elements of her claim. But if the probabilities of the elements are aggregated, the plaintiff loses, because the probability that the defendant was at fault and caused the harm is only 36%. 3 There is uncertainty about whether and to what extent courts engage in cross-element factual aggregation. A third type of factual aggregation, which we call within-element factual aggregation, occurs when the plaintiff proposes several alternative factual theories that satisfy a single element of a claim. Say, for example, that the plaintiff suing for negligence has two distinct theories for why the defendant was at fault, and she can prove that each theory is true with 40% probability. If the probabilities of the two theories are not aggregated, the plaintiff will fail to establish the element of fault by preponderance of the evidence. If the probabilities are aggregated, however, the plaintiff will successfully establish fault, because the probability that one theory or the other is true is 64%. Unlike cross-claim factual aggregation, within-element factual aggregation is routine in American jurisprudence. 1. Two claims are independent if the probability of the two claims being valid is independent; that is, if one claim is valid, it does not affect the probability of the other claim being valid. So long as two claims are not fully dependent, aggregation is not precluded. For further discussion of dependence, see infra notes and accompanying text. 2. The probability of at least one claim being valid is 1 - (1-0.4) 2 = =

5 the yale law journal 122: Aggregation does not always require uncertainty. Suppose that a plaintiff can show with certainty that the defendant induced the creation of a contract with misleading remarks that fall just short of fraudulent misrepresentation, and that the defendant subsequently engaged in a breach that falls just short of material. A court would typically not grant rescission, but not because the plaintiff failed to establish facts with sufficient probability. The plaintiff would lose because, for each claim, she failed to allege sufficient wrongdoing. Yet one could argue that even if each is insufficient standing alone the two bad acts together justify rescission. We will call this type of aggregation normative aggregation. Like factual aggregation, it has cross-claim, cross-element, and within-element variations. Combining the independently insufficient claims for fraudulent misrepresentation and material breach described above, for example, would entail cross-claim normative aggregation. The normative weights of the two claims, neither of which standing alone is sufficient to establish liability, would be aggregated, and the combined weight of the two claims would establish liability. Although courts do not usually permit this type of aggregation, such aggregation does occur in one important class of cases. When a neutral and generally applicable statute burdens religious exercise alone, it does not violate the First Amendment. But if the law simultaneously burdens another constitutional right, such as the right to free speech even if that burden is not sufficient to violate that constitutional right independently the law may nonetheless be overturned because of the aggregate burden it imposes on two constitutional rights. 4 One can also imagine cases that share aspects of cross-claim factual aggregation and cross-claim normative aggregation. Suppose that the plaintiff can prove material breach with 40% probability, and can prove with certainty that the defendant induced the creation of the contract with misleading remarks that fall just short of fraudulent misrepresentation. One might argue that the plaintiff should be entitled to rescind the contract, but courts do not permit this type of cross-claim mixed aggregation. Another type of aggregation takes place across persons. Suppose that a firm pollutes the air, and ten nearby residents claim that they were injured by the pollution. Each resident can show that she breathed in the pollution and that her medical condition deteriorated after the pollution, but all residents suffer from preexisting respiratory ailments, and thus cannot show with probability above 50% that the pollution, rather than their preexisting conditions, caused 4. See infra notes and accompanying text. 6

6 aggregation and law their harm. They would therefore lose their cases. Yet if each resident could show that the probability that the pollution exacerbated her medical condition is, say, 10%, then the residents can collectively prove that the probability that at least one of them was injured was greater than 50%, and therefore that the firm should pay damages 5 (although not necessarily everyone s damages an issue we will address later). We will call this type of aggregation cross-person aggregation. Cross-person aggregation could be factual, as in the preceding example, but could also be normative or mixed. 6 These examples illustrate an important vulnerability at the heart of the law. They reflect the fact that law relies on legal categories that organize the judicial treatment of disputes. These categories operate at different levels of generality, including bodies of law (tort, contract), claims (strict liability, negligence), and elements (offer, acceptance, breach, harm). These categories are important, and it is hard to imagine how the law would work without them. But they also require courts to disregard information that is relevant to an overall evaluation of the asserted wrongdoing. This happens in the ways we have illustrated. First, where two claims concern a single act by the defendant, some of the factual information that is relevant for evaluating the defendant s wrongdoing may need to be disregarded when one claim is evaluated, and other factual information disregarded when the other claim is evaluated. An act that is not clearly a strict liability tort and at the same time not clearly a negligence tort may nonetheless clearly be one or the other (assuming that the strict liability and negligence claims are at least partially independent) and thus a wrongful act that should entitle the victim to a remedy. A similar phenomenon transpires when the two (or more) claims relate to two (or more) events, and each event is considered separately, isolated from one another. Even if for each event standing alone the plaintiff cannot establish that the defendant caused the harm, the plaintiff may nonetheless be able to establish that the defendant caused the harm in at least one of the events. Conversely, even if in each event standing alone the plaintiff can establish that the defendant caused one harm, he may not be able to establish that the 5. The probability that at least one resident was injured is 1 - (1-0.1) The phrase aggregation could have various meanings in different contexts. In particular, the law allows a type of aggregation for evidentiary purposes through the prior-acts and similar-crimes doctrines applied in criminal law, see infra notes and accompanying text, according to which past behavior of the accused could serve as evidence to prove his guilt in the present case. What is typical of this type of aggregation is the dependence between the accused s different misbehaviors; a defendant is arguably more likely to have committed a crime given his demonstrated involvement in past crimes. Our focus instead is on aggregation of independent claims, although we admit that sometimes the distinction between the two types of aggregation is blurred. 7

7 the yale law journal 122: defendant caused both harms. In this way, as we explore further below, aggregation can lead to less liability in some cases. Second, the law relies heavily on thresholds even when wrongdoing is typically a continuous variable. 7 A plaintiff must reach one normative threshold along the continuum of increasingly severe wrongdoing to show fraudulent misrepresentation and another normative threshold to show material breach. But where an event falls just short of the thresholds in two separate legal dimensions, or two events individually fall short of the threshold, the threshold may be exceeded when those dimensions, or events, are aggregated. The defendant who does not quite engage in fraudulent misrepresentation and does not quite engage in material breach may nonetheless have acted wrongfully in her overall treatment of the plaintiff. Conversely, a criminal defendant prosecuted for assault who falls just short of the thresholds for both the insanity defense and a claim of self-defense may not be blameworthy enough to justify conviction. Third, the law generally treats individuals as the unit of analysis, even though wrongdoing can often be probabilistic, in a sense transcending individuals. The point is not just that a firm that causes a small amount of harm to a large number of people may escape liability because no individual possesses a sufficient incentive to bring suit. This is a familiar problem, one that is addressed by the class action system. The problem is that even if each individual faced zero legal costs, she would lose her case. The probability that she was harmed is low or, alternatively, does not quite reach the normative threshold for each individual, but across many persons, that probability becomes significant. Each of these cases bears a family resemblance to the others. They all stem from the problem of aggregating two types of things: factual information and normative weight. In the bulk of this Article, we will examine additional examples of how such aggregation might take place in torts, contracts, criminal law, and public law. We will also identify actual instances of aggregation in several of those fields and provide some tentative proposals for reforming how courts incorporate aggregation. Our focus will be general explanations and 7. See, for example, John E. Coons, Approaches to Court Imposed Compromise The Uses of Doubt and Reason, 58 NW. U. L. REV. 750, 751 (1964), which argues that the law typically requires judges to choose winners and losers on an all-or-nothing basis even when the outcomes are harsh. Coons calls for court-imposed compromises based on the idea that there is a continuum of solutions between the two polarized ones: [I]mposed compromise shall mean the apportionment of right and duty between opposed litigants by a court according to a quantitative standard that is not limited to the favoring of one party to the exclusion of his adversary. Id. at

8 aggregation and law proposals that apply to aggregation in all fields of law. We summarize our conclusions here. All of the cases reflect a familiar rules/standards tradeoff. The law disaggregates in order to reduce decision costs for courts and other decisionmakers, including ordinary people and firms who want to obey the law. The basic breakdown of wrongdoing into bodies of law, and then those bodies of law into claims, and those claims into elements, brings a regimented clarity to the process of learning and applying the law. But the disaggregation of wrongdoing into a series of rules comes at a cost: morally relevant information is lost. To some extent, the law already recognizes this problem. Certain doctrines permit courts in certain cases to re-aggregate disaggregated claims. We will discuss examples later, but for now a few such examples that might be cited are the alternative liability rule and market share liability doctrine in tort law, the unconscionability doctrine in contract law, and the hybrid rights doctrine for the Free Exercise Clause in constitutional law. These doctrines permit courts to aggregate claims that would otherwise be kept separate under more conventional types of legal analysis. However, we will argue that, because of its failure to aggregate more broadly or consistently, the law falls short in many significant respects, some of them illustrated by our examples above. Our minimal goal is to propose reaggregation doctrines that permit courts to aggregate factual and normative claims where doing so does not create excessive confusion. We show that aggregation would often lead to more liability compared to nonaggregation, but occasionally the reverse is true and aggregation would lead to less liability. Our more ambitious goal is to suggest general parameters for the optimal level of aggregation in the law. The Article proceeds as follows. Parts I through IV analyze the nonaggregation problem in tort law, contract law, criminal law, and public law, respectively. Part V discusses explanations and justifications for courts refusal to aggregate, offers a theory for analyzing aggregation problems in the law, and proposes methods of implementation. The Conclusion summarizes the discussion Aggregation has largely been ignored by legal writers. A notable exception is Saul Levmore, Conjunction and Aggregation, 99 MICH. L. REV. 723 (2001). Levmore s discussion, however, is limited to factual aggregation and is focused on tort law, specifically on factual aggregation across the elements of the same cause of action. See infra discussion accompanying notes Some parts of Levmore s analysis in particular, his discussion of implementation difficulties in aggregation could be relevant to some types of factual aggregation that we discuss, but not to others. Levmore, supra, at Another exception is Alon Harel & 9

9 the yale law journal 122: i. tort law A. Factual Aggregation Factual aggregation in tort law is common for determining whether the defendant committed a particular element of a claim, like fault or causation in a negligence claim. Take, for example, a case where a car parked at the curb by the defendant begins to roll downhill and hits the plaintiff, and the reason for the car s roll could be that the defendant either failed to set the brakes or failed to cut the wheels properly against the curb, or failed to put the car in parking gear. It would be common practice for the court or jury to find that the defendant s fault caused the accident even without knowing what the defendant s faulty behavior was, as long as the aggregated probability that some faulty behavior of the defendant caused the harm is sufficiently high. 9 In this way, courts allow what we call within-element factual aggregation for proving Ariel Porat, Aggregating Probabilities Across Cases: Criminal Responsibility for Unspecified Offenses, 94 MINN. L. REV. 261 (2009). Harel and Porat analyze factual aggregation in criminal law and focus on situations where the accused is charged with two or more separate offenses and none of them can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, but there is no reasonable doubt that he committed at least one of them. Id. at Frederick Schauer and Richard Zeckhauser propose aggregating probabilities across cases outside the judicial context. See Frederick Schauer & Richard Zeckhauser, On the Degree of Confidence for Adverse Decisions, 25 J. LEGAL STUD. 27, (1996). They argue that it would make sense for a school to dismiss a teacher against whom several complaints of sexual harassment had been made in the past, even if each complaint, considered independently, would not constitute sufficient reason for dismissal. Id. at 44. Schauer and Zeckhauser maintain, however, that such an argument is inapplicable to criminal proceedings. Id. at 41, 46, 52. Daryl Levinson considers cases where remedies like school desegregation decrees are based on a kind of aggregation of multiple past behaviors by government entities (a kind of cross-claim factual aggregation) against multiple persons (a kind of cross-person aggregation). See Daryl J. Levinson, Framing Transactions in Constitutional Law, 111 YALE L.J. 1311, (2002). Finally, a related literature exists on the problem of multimember decisionmaking bodies. See, e.g., Jonathan Remy Nash, A Context-Sensitive Voting Protocol Paradigm for Multimember Courts, 56 STAN. L. REV. 75 (2003) (discussing decisionmaking by multimember judicial panels); Hayden J. Trubitt, Patchwork Verdicts, Different-Jurors Verdicts, and American Jury Theory: Whether Verdicts Are Invalidated by Juror Disagreement on Issues, 36 OKLA. L. REV. 473 (1983) (discussing jury verdicts where jurors agree on the outcome but disagree on the facts). Unlike this literature, we assume a single judicial decisionmaker. For a factfinding theory that opposes factual aggregations of any kind, see Kevin M. Clermont, Death of Paradox: The Killer Logic Beneath the Standards of Proof, 88 NOTRE DAME L. REV. (forthcoming 2012), and in particular footnote 124, which relates directly to our Article and proposes that the paradoxes that motivate our Article do not exist. 9. For this example and others, see DAN B. DOBBS, THE LAW OF TORTS 154 (2000). 10

10 aggregation and law fault. Courts, however, do not engage in cross-claim factual aggregation. Consider the following example: Example I.1. The Inherently Dangerous Vehicle. The defendant hit the plaintiff while driving. The plaintiff argues that the defendant is strictly liable because he was driving an inherently dangerous vehicle and, in the alternative, that the defendant caused the harm by his negligent driving. The plaintiff, however, cannot establish his claims by the preponderance of the evidence. Specifically, the plaintiff can only show that the probability of each claim is 40%. Nonaggregation results in both claims being rejected. If the court deciding the case instead aggregates the two claims, and it determines that those claims are independent, it will impose liability on the defendant. The probability that the defendant wrongfully hit the plaintiff would be 64%, enough to satisfy the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard. 10 Courts, however, do not aggregate in cases like Example I As a result, defendants escape liability even when the probability that they wrongfully harmed the plaintiff is greater than 50%, simply because the plaintiff cannot establish what exactly the wrong committed by the defendant was. The next two examples represent a cross-claim factual aggregation relating to two separate events. Example I.2. Injury in the Hospital: Two Events, One Injury. The plaintiff was admitted to the hospital while having a heart attack. Initially, the doctor at the emergency room misdiagnosed him and sent him home. When the plaintiff returned two days later, another doctor in the cardiology department allegedly gave him poor treatment. The plaintiff did not fully recover. He sues the hospital for vicarious liability, arguing that the two doctors were negligent, and that each doctor s negligence is a but-for cause of his injury. The evidence before the court indicates 10. The probability that either claim is valid is 1 - (1-0.4) 2 = In Candler General Hospital, Inc. v. McNorrill, 354 S.E.2d 872 (Ga. Ct. App. 1987), the plaintiff allegedly fell and hurt his knee while being transferred by a nurse from a stretcher to a wheelchair. Id. at 873. The plaintiff argued that the hospital was vicariously liable for the nurse s negligence, as well as directly liable for negligence due to the inadequacy of the equipment and personnel in the emergency room. Id. at 874. The court ordered that both claims should be presented to a jury, but it did not contemplate aggregation of the claims. Id. at It is quite possible that a jury would hold in favor of the hospital if both claims were examined separately but would impose liability if the claims were aggregated. 11

11 the yale law journal 122: that the probability that each of the doctors caused the harm negligently is only 40%. In contrast to Example I.1, in Example I.2 there are two separate events occurring at different times and places, and the same defendant (the hospital) could be (vicariously) liable for their injurious effects. If the two claims relating to the two events are evaluated separately, liability should not be imposed. If instead the two claims are aggregated, the court should hold the defendant liable, as long as the events are independent, even though it cannot determine which of the two events was the wrongful one. It seems that courts would not aggregate in cases represented by Example I.2. However, two special doctrines of tort liability arguably could allow aggregation in multiple-event, one-injury cases. First, courts have been willing to impose liability on hospitals and their employees when a plaintiff has established that he suffered harm from the negligence of one of the hospital s employees, even if the identity of the specific employee who negligently caused the harm remained unknown. Courts have imposed liability in these cases under the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur. 12 Although these cases usually involve one event, 13 the doctrine might conceivably apply to two events if a plaintiff could establish that he suffered harm from an unidentified employee s negligence during one of those events. 14 Second, courts might be willing to impose liability on hospitals and their employees under the alternative liability rule from Summers v. Tice 15 if a plaintiff could establish that those employees were each negligent, even if the plaintiff could not prove which employee s negligence caused the harm at issue. Under the alternative liability rule, as first codified in the Restatement (Second) 12. For example, in Fieux v. Cardiovascular & Thoracic Clinic, P.C., 978 P.2d 429 (Or. Ct. App. 1999), a clamp was left behind on the plaintiff s heart during a surgery. Id. at 431. The plaintiff could not prove which member of the medical staff, composed of three nurses and one surgeon, was negligent. He relied on res ipsa loquitur to infer negligence. Id. The court permitted the plaintiff to proceed to trial against several defendants on that theory, overturning the trial court s directed verdict for the hospital. Id. 13. See, e.g., id. 14. For example, had the plaintiff in Fieux undergone two consecutive but distinct procedures that involved heart clamps, he could have attempted to demonstrate that the harm he suffered must have occurred because of some employee s negligence during one of the two procedures P.2d 1 (Cal. 1948) (imposing liability on two hunters for the injury one of them caused the plaintiff, when both hunters negligently shot in the plaintiff s direction, and the identity of the one who actually injured the plaintiff was not established). 12

12 aggregation and law of Torts, 16 and later in the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Liability for Physical and Emotional Harm, 17 when the plaintiff can establish that several defendants acted tortiously toward him, and that at least one of them caused his harm, each of the defendants bears the burden to show that it was not his tortious conduct that caused the harm. Although the alternative liability rule, like res ipsa loquitur, has traditionally been applied to cases of one event during which multiple defendants act simultaneously, its logic also seems to apply to multiple-event cases in which defendants act at different moments in time, as long as the tortious conduct of each defendant can be proven by the preponderance of the evidence. Both the Restatement (Second) and Restatement (Third) treat this interpretation of the alternative liability rule as viable. 18 In the next example, despite similarities to Example I.2, courts would clearly avoid any aggregation. Example I.3. Injury in the Hospital: Two Events, Two Injuries. Same facts as in Example I.2, except that it is alleged that each doctor negligently caused the plaintiff separate harm: the doctor in the emergency room allegedly caused him necrosis in his leg, and the doctor in the cardiology department allegedly injured his heart. The probability of each allegation is 40%. 16. RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS 433B(3) (1965). 17. RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF TORTS: LIAB. FOR PHYSICAL & EMOTIONAL HARM 28(b) (2010). 18. See id. 28(b) cmt. k; id. 28 reporters note (citing several cases suggesting that the simultaneity of the defendants acts is not a precondition for the applicability of the alternative liability rule); RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS 433B(3) cmt. h ( The cases thus far decided in which the rule stated in Subsection (3) has been applied all have been cases in which all of the actors involved have been joined as defendants. All of these cases have involved conduct simultaneous in time, or substantially so, and all of them have involved conduct of substantially the same character, creating substantially the same risk of harm, on the part of each actor. It is possible that cases may arise in which some modification of the rule stated may be necessary because of complications arising from the fact that one of the actors involved is not or cannot be joined as a defendant, or because of the effect of lapse of time, or because of substantial differences in the character of the conduct of the actors or the risks which they have created. Since such cases have not arisen, and the situations which might arise are difficult to forecast, no attempt is made to deal with such problems in this Section. The rule stated in Subsection (3) is not intended to preclude possible modification if such situations call for it. ). Several courts, however, have rejected that application of the alternative liability rule. See Skipworth v. Lead Indus. Ass n, 690 A.2d 169, 174 (Pa. 1997) (rejecting the argument that the alternative liability rule applies when defendants did not act simultaneously); Smith v. Cutter Biological, Inc., 823 P.2d 717, 725 (Haw. 1991) (same). 13

13 the yale law journal 122: With no aggregation, the hospital as well as the two doctors will bear no liability, even though the probability that the plaintiff suffered harm caused by wrongdoing for which the hospital is responsible is 64%. Aggregation, instead, would lead to the imposition of liability on the hospital if the events are independent. Indeed, analogizing from the alternative liability rule of Summers v. Tice, one could argue that if the plaintiff could show that the two doctors were each negligent, each doctor should be held liable unless he can establish that his negligence did not cause the plaintiff s harm. The Restatement (Third) justifies the alternative liability rule in part by explaining that between two culpable defendants and an innocent plaintiff, it is preferable to put the risk of error on the culpable defendants. 19 Although the rule does not apply, under current law, to two-event, two-injury cases, its underlying risk-of-error logic arguably applies to such cases, as well as to incidents of one event, one injury (as in Summers v. Tice) and two events, one injury (as in Example I.2). If aggregation occurs in Example I.3, what amount of liability would be imposed on the hospital? At a minimum, the hospital would be liable for the less severe injury. Alternatively, the hospital could be liable for the average of the two injuries, for the more severe injury, for a probabilistic recovery, or for some other amount. Each of these options has both advantages and disadvantages that we discuss later. 20 At this stage, it suffices to say that nonaggregation in cases represented by both Examples I.2 and I.3 would allow defendants to escape liability even when the probability that they wrongfully harmed the plaintiff (or are vicariously liable for the harm) is greater than 50%, just because the plaintiff cannot identify with sufficient certainty the exact wrongful injurious behavior that caused his harm (Example I.2), or which of the two harms suffered by him is the result of an injurious behavior (Example I.3). 21 So far, aggregating claims would lead to more rather than less liability. But this is not always so. In Example I.3, with different numbers, aggregation could lead to less rather than more liability. To see why, assume that the 19. RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF TORTS 28(b) cmt. g. The comment explains that [i]n at least some cases, it appears that the defendants better access to proof and doubts about the plaintiff s ability to extract that evidence from the defendants... have influenced the courts to employ burden shifting. 20. See infra Subsection V.C We might also imagine a one-event, two-injury (or two-harms-from-one-injury) case that would fall between Examples I.2 and I.3, in which a plaintiff establishes that he suffered two distinct injuries (or two separate harms from one injury) during a single event and attempts to hold one defendant liable. As in Examples I.2 and I.3, aggregating the probabilities that the defendant caused each injury (or each harm) could enhance liability in such a case. 14

14 aggregation and law probability of the claims with respect to each doctor is 60% instead of 40%. With no aggregation the hospital would be liable for both injuries; with aggregation, the hospital will be liable for one injury only. The probability that the claims against both doctors are correct is only 36%, 22 and 36% is not enough to establish liability. The probability that at least one of the claims is correct, however, is 84%, 23 more than enough to establish liability. Note that less liability in this example is arguably consistent with tort law goals. Tort law seeks to impose liability if, and only if, it is more probable than not that the defendant wrongfully caused the plaintiff s injury. In the general case, it is probably assumed by the law that the point where the adverse effects of too much and too little liability (and compensation) equalize is where the probability of the plaintiff s allegations is 50%. 24 Under this assumption, if the probability that both injuries to the plaintiff were wrongfully caused by the two doctors is only 36%, liability for both harms should not be imposed. The point that aggregating claims could lead to either more or less liability in cases involving two injuries brings us to an interesting conclusion. When an injurer cannot know in advance whether, in his case, aggregation would increase or reduce his liability, aggregation would not necessarily change the injurer s expected liability and so might not affect his behavior. To illustrate, assume that in our example the hospital anticipates that there could be two injuries where in each case the harm would be 100, and the probability that a doctor s negligence caused each injury will be either 40% or 60% for both injuries (with equal probabilities). With no aggregation the hospital s expected liability if the two allegations are made is 100. There is a 50% likelihood that the probability of each allegation is 40% and the hospital pays zero, and a 50% likelihood that the probability of each allegation is 60% and the hospital pays 200. But the hospital s expected liability is also 100 with aggregation. If courts will aggregate, then there is still a 50% likelihood that the probability of each allegation is 40%, but now the hospital would pay 100, because there is a probability of 64% that a doctor was responsible for at least one of the two injuries. There is also a 50% likelihood that the probability of each allegation is 60%, but now the hospital would pay 100 here as well, because there is a probability of 84% that a doctor was responsible for at least = (1-0.6) 2 = For more on the logic of the preponderance-of-the-evidence rule and its role in allocating the risk of error, see ALEX STEIN, FOUNDATIONS OF EVIDENCE LAW (2005). For a critical account of the argument that the preponderance-of-the-evidence rule maximizes social welfare, and for the argument that the efficient level of proof is contextual, see Louis Kaplow, Burden of Proof, 121 YALE L.J. 738 (2012). 15

15 the yale law journal 122: one of the two injuries, but a probability of only 36% that a doctor was responsible for both injuries. Once expected liability with or without aggregation is the same, the injurer s incentives are the same as well. Aggregation, however, would be of utmost importance for efficient incentives in two-injury cases if the injurer could know in advance that the probabilities of each of the claims against him would typically be lower than 50%, or would typically be higher than 50%. In the extreme case where the probabilities are always lower than 50%, with no aggregation the injurer never pays and is underdeterred, while with aggregation he pays sometimes and is better deterred. 25 Conversely, if the injurer could know in advance that the probabilities in his case would always be higher than 50%, a rule of no aggregation could result in overdeterrence, 26 because under the rule of no aggregation the injurer s expected liability would be higher than the expected harm of his behavior. Aggregation would reduce expected liability, making it closer to the expected harm and improving deterrence. One type of situation where the injurer could know in advance whether the probabilities of liability would be lower or higher than 50% is a medical malpractice case, in which evidence regarding causation is likely to be statistical in nature. A doctor can often predict whether the probability of causation that a 25. Note, however, that in cases represented by Example I.3, under certain assumptions (which we believe very rarely hold), aggregation could have some overdeterrence effects that should be contrasted with the underdeterrence effects that nonaggregation yields. Thus, if the second doctor in this example is fully informed, in real time, about the first doctor s alleged negligent infliction of harm on the plaintiff, and also that the probability of this allegation is substantial but lower than 50%, he (or the hospital) would take excessive precautions so as not to bear liability if something goes wrong and the plaintiff suffers a second injury. An analogous argument could be made with respect to Example I.2 (Injury in the Hospital: Two Events, One Injury). In other circumstances, and under similar assumptions, aggregation may lead to underdeterrence. Imagine that in the prior example, the second doctor is informed in real time that the probability of the allegation against the first doctor is slightly more than 50%. The second doctor (or the hospital) might take deficient precautions to prevent a second injury for the same patient, knowing that only a very high-probability allegation with respect to such a second injury would allow him any additional recovery for it. (To illustrate, if the probability of the patient s allegation relating to the first injury is 51%, in order to recover for both the first and second injury, the patient should be able to prove his allegations with respect to the second injury with a probability close to 100%.) 26. Under a negligence rule, overdeterrence would arguably not result if the standard of care were set accurately, the injurer could observe it, and the courts could accurately enforce it, even if the injurer pays damages higher than the harm caused by his negligence. See ROBERT COOTER & THOMAS ULEN, LAW AND ECONOMICS (6th ed. 2012) (arguing that a small change in the damages awarded to the victim will not cause the injurer s behavior to change). 16

16 aggregation and law plaintiff will be able to establish using statistical evidence is lower or higher than 50%. 27 In other types of cases the injurer may just know that it would be hard for the victim to collect evidence statistical or case-specific to prove his case, so he can predict that the probabilities of any allegations of injury would be low. Lastly, there are cases where aggregation can lead to more liability, but never less. These are the cases where two (or more) alternative claims are made regarding a single injury, rather than two separate injuries. Examples I.1 (The Inherently Dangerous Vehicle) and I.2 (Injury in the Hospital: Two Events, One Injury) belong to this category. No aggregation in this context typically leads to underdeterrence, because in some cases injurers escape liability even if it is more probable than not that they wrongfully inflicted harm on the defendant. Aggregation can help to correct this underdeterrence. In all of the examples discussed so far, aggregation of claims would not be necessary if courts allowed probabilistic recoveries. Under a probabilistic recovery rule (PRR), a defendant s liability is the amount of the harm done to the plaintiff multiplied by the probability that the harm was wrongfully caused by the defendant. Only some jurisdictions allow PRR, and even when they allow it, PRR applies in very limited contexts (mostly in cases of lost chances of recovery 28 ) and only when causation but not wrongfulness is uncertain. 29 It is beyond the scope of this Article to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of PRR. But some brief comments are in order. There are some clear limits to PRR compared to aggregation. First, when the remedy cannot be prorated, as with injunctions, PRR is inapplicable, while aggregation applies more broadly. 30 Second, to apply PRR, courts need accurate information about 27. For a discussion of medical malpractice cases where the typical probabilities of causation are low and underdeterrence may result, see Ariel Porat, Misalignments in Tort Law, 121 YALE L.J. 82, (2011). 28. See, e.g., Herskovits v. Grp. Health Coop. of Puget Sound, 664 P.2d 474, (Wash. 1983) (holding that a fourteen percentage-point reduction, from 39% to 25%, in the decedent s chance for survival was sufficient evidence to allow the case to go to the jury); Joseph H. King, Jr., Causation, Valuation, and Chance in Personal Injury Torts Involving Preexisting Conditions and Future Consequences, 90 YALE L.J. 1353, (1981) (endorsing the application of a probabilistic rule to lost-chance-of-recovery cases); see also Doll v. Brown, 75 F.3d 1200, (7th Cir. 1996) (suggesting the use of a probabilistic rule to calculate damages for the lost chance to be promoted). 29. See generally ARIEL PORAT & ALEX STEIN, TORT LIABILITY UNDER UNCERTAINTY (2001) (discussing the pros and cons of probabilistic recovery in different contexts, including cases where wrongfulness is uncertain). 30. To be fair, tailoring a remedy under aggregation could sometimes be complex. Thus, in Example I.3 (Injury in the Hospital: Two Events, Two Injuries), as we have explained, there 17

17 the yale law journal 122: the probability that the defendant wronged the plaintiff. That could often make adjudication costly, which is probably one of the reasons why PRR is so rare in the law. This is not the case with aggregation. To aggregate claims, courts do not need to calculate exact probabilities; they only need to determine whether aggregation makes it more probable than not that the defendant wronged the plaintiff (or that a defense applies). Third, corrective justice theorists resist PRR because it can make the defendant compensate the plaintiff even though it is not more probable than not that he has wronged him. Other theorists not belonging to the corrective justice school could raise the related concern that the machinery of the law should not be put in motion against a defendant until it is more probable than not that the plaintiff is entitled to a remedy. In contrast, with aggregation, the defendant pays damages (or is subject to other remedies) only when it is more probable than not that he wronged the plaintiff. 31 Aggregation would therefore be easier to accept for many who resist PRR. 32 At the same time, PRR holds several advantages over aggregation. In particular, PRR works more systematically and accurately than aggregation because it is applied to each claim separately and calibrates damages accurately. Also, possible strategic behavior by injurers trying to avoid future aggregation of low probability claims against them under an aggregation rule would not take place under PRR. The last example in this Section, which was first analyzed by Saul Levmore, 33 addresses a case where factual aggregation occurs within a claim but across elements which we call cross-element factual aggregation. Such aggregation typically leads to less rather than more liability. 34 are several possible awards of damages under an aggregation rule, and it is often hard to know how to choose among them. For further discussion of the aggregation of disparate monetary awards, see infra Subsection V.C.3. Also, there could be situations where the plaintiff seeks to aggregate claims for two different types of relief, like damages and an injunction. Tailoring an aggregated remedy in such a case could be especially complex. See infra Subsection V.C The alternative liability rule is a narrow exception, as it permits liability where a defendant s wrongdoing, but not the causal link between that wrongdoing and the plaintiff s injury, has been established by the preponderance of the evidence. See supra notes and accompanying text. 32. For more on the relationship between corrective justice theory and aggregation, see infra Subsection V.B Levmore, supra note 8, at 723, It could lead to more liability only if some elements were alternatives to one another. Id. at

18 aggregation and law Example I.4. Several Elements of One Claim (A). In support of his negligence claim, the plaintiff argues that the defendant acted negligently and that the defendant s conduct caused the plaintiff s injury. The probability that the defendant acted negligently is 60%, and the probability that the defendant s conduct caused the plaintiff s harm is also 60%. With no aggregation, the court would find the defendant liable, but with aggregation, liability would not be imposed, assuming the probabilities are independent. Specifically, aggregation would yield that the probability that the defendant negligently caused the litigated harm is only 36%, short of the preponderance-of-the-evidence threshold. Note that the aggregation problem becomes more acute as the number of elements composing the claim rises. Thus, if in addition to the uncertainty with respect to negligence and causation there is also uncertainty with respect to the plaintiff s harm, such that each of the three elements is proven with a probability of 60%, aggregation would yield a probability of 21.6% that the defendant negligently caused the litigated harm. 35 The law is not clear as to whether juries and judges should engage in cross-element aggregation: in several jurisdictions, jury instructions encourage such aggregation, while in other jurisdictions they discourage it. 36 Throughout this Section, we have assumed that the probabilities of the two (or more) claims being valid are independent; that is, if one claim is valid, it does not affect the probability of the other claim being valid. However, this assumption does not cover all cases. Sometimes there is dependence between the probabilities, and then aggregation becomes more complex. 37 Thus, if the defendant allegedly engaged in two separate wrongful acts that caused two injuries (or injuries caused by two individuals for whom the defendant is vicariously liable, as in Example I.3 (Injury in the Hospital: Two Events, Two = Levmore, supra note 8, at 752 n.58 (suggesting that no jurisdiction explicitly recognizes cross-element factual aggregation); id. at 725, 741 (arguing that jury instructions tend to be ambiguous in several states, implicitly allowing such aggregation); see also Ronald J. Allen & Sarah A. Jehl, Burdens of Persuasion in Civil Cases: Algorithms v. Explanations, 2003 MICH. ST. L. REV. 893, (arguing that virtually no model jury instruction, state or federal, endorses cross-element factual aggregation); Alex Stein, Of Two Wrongs That Make a Right: Two Paradoxes of the Evidence Law and Their Combined Economic Justification, 79 TEX. L. REV. 1199, 1204 (2001) (providing examples of jury instructions in several jurisdictions that call for separate examination of the elements). 37. Cf. Levmore, supra note 8, at (discussing the dependence problem mainly in cases similar to our Example I.4). 19

19 the yale law journal 122: Injuries)), the invalidity of the claim that the defendant negligently caused the first injury could decrease the probability of the validity of the claim that the defendant negligently caused the second injury, and vice versa. This complication, however, does not necessarily preclude aggregation. To illustrate, assume that claim A s probability standing alone is 40%, and claim B s probability standing alone is also 40%. Assume now that the probabilities of the two claims are somewhat dependent: if claim A is invalid, the probability of claim B being valid is only 20%. With no aggregation, both claims will be dismissed since a 40% probability (and certainly a 20% probability) is not enough to establish liability. With aggregation, however, some degree of liability would be imposed, since the probability that at least one claim holds is greater than 50%. 38 Because the probabilities of the two claims are dependent, the probability that at least one claim is valid is less than 64%, which would have been the result of aggregation if both claims (with 40% probability) had been independent. In the extreme case, the dependence between the probabilities of the two claims is full, which means that if claim A is invalid, claim B is also invalid and vice versa. With full dependence, aggregation becomes meaningless, since the probability that claim A (or claim B) holds is the same as the probability that at least one of those claims holds. 39 B. Normative Aggregation and Mixed Aggregation Consider the following example: Example I.5. Insanity and Mitigation: Two Almost Defenses. The defendant hit the plaintiff while driving his car at an unreasonable speed. The plaintiff was injured and later chose not to undergo an essential surgery that would have cured him completely. The plaintiff sues the defendant for negligently causing him the injury. The defendant raises two defenses: insanity on his part and failure to mitigate damages on the plaintiff s part. The court concludes that even though the defendant suffered from severe mental instability at the 38. The probability of claim A being invalid is 0.6, and the probability of claim B being invalid, conditional on the invalidity of claim A, is 0.8. Therefore, the probability of both claims being invalid is 0.6 * 0.8 = 0.48, and the probability of at least one claim being valid is = Notice that updating the probabilities of claims A and B due to their dependence is not aggregation in our terms. With aggregation, the probabilities of the two claims are not changed; instead, aggregation derives the probability that at least one of the two claims is valid. For further elaboration on this distinction, see infra notes and accompanying text. 20

20 aggregation and law time of the accident, his mental capacity had not been diminished to the point where the insanity defense applies. 40 The court also concludes that even though the plaintiff s failure to undergo the surgery was unreasonable for most people, the mitigation-of-damages defense does not apply, since tort law tolerates people s resistance to undergoing surgery. 41 The court deciding the case would not aggregate the two defenses raised by the defendant, and would reject both of them. 42 We might criticize this stance by pointing out that a defendant with both almost defenses may seem less blameworthy than a defendant with only one. In a metaphoric way, we could say that a defendant whose justifications or excuses for wrongdoing reach a point of normative weight denoted as a should not face liability. That point can be reached with a single viable defense that provides the normative weight of a, but also by the accumulative normative weight of two almost defenses (assuming, for example, that the normative weight of each of the almost defenses is ½ a or more). 43 Consider this argument from an economic perspective. We sometimes do not impose liability on mentally incompetent people because they are undeterrable, and we deny damages to plaintiffs who fail to mitigate in order to give them an incentive to mitigate. But we may also want to deny damages where the barely mentally competent person will be only barely responsive to them and the surgery-fearing victim will be 40. The insanity defense is quite limited under American tort law. See DOBBS, supra note 9, 120 (stating that the general rule is that the mentally disabled are liable for negligence, subject to limited exceptions); cf. Breunig v. Am. Family Ins. Co., 173 N.W.2d 619 (Wis. 1970) (deciding that when a person commits an act as a result of a sudden onset of unforeseeable insanity comparable in its effect to certain physical impairments, liability will not be imposed). 41. See RICHARD A. EPSTEIN, TORTS 448 (1999) (noting that a plaintiff should, and typically does, operate within a domain of reasonable choice that spares her from having to make unwanted life choices solely to minimize... [a defendant s] financial losses ). 42. In Boa v. San Francisco-Oakland Terminal Railways, 187 P. 2 (Cal. 1920), the plaintiff sustained physical injury when she exited the defendant s streetcar. Id. at 3. The defendant argued both that the plaintiff was contributorily negligent and that she failed to mitigate damages by choosing an improper physician. Id. at 5. The trial court instructed the jury that the contributory negligence defense should be rejected unless it had been proved by the preponderance of the evidence. Id. at 6. The jury denied both defenses. Had the court instructed the jury to aggregate the claims, either factually or normatively, the jury might have reached a different decision. 43. Notice that this argument holds even if one of the defenses raised by the defendant does not exist in the legal system at all: thus, even if an insanity defense is absent from a certain legal system, an argument can be made that the defendant s insanity coupled with an additional almost defense could be sufficient to exempt the defendant from liability. 21

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